


blindside

by rhymeswithpi, yodepalma



Series: limit break [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Affectionate Insults, Angst, Anxiety, Gen, Gladio is trying his best ok, Headcanon, Injury, Introspection, POV Multiple, Pre-Game(s), Touch Aversion, iggy is a bit of a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 11:53:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10662039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymeswithpi/pseuds/rhymeswithpi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yodepalma/pseuds/yodepalma
Summary: “My flashlight died,” Iggy says. His voice is slurred from the fucking concussion but otherwise he sounds…normal. “I’m de-lighted!”“You’re—” Gladio takes a second to process the pun. “Oh shit. Are you blind,can you see me?”





	1. Chapter 1

People are staring at him. He’s keenly aware of their eyes following him, and he’s struggling to convince himself it’s just because he’s changed a couple things about his appearance. They’re _not_ a threat. He knows they’re not a threat. If someone’s going to attempt anything, they aren’t going to do it in a grocery store. They’re just people on the street, in a shop, on the underground. People who probably see him once or twice a week, vaguely know who he is and what he usually looks like.

His contact keeps shifting just to the side, and he closes one eye, tries to will it back into its proper position. It’s refusing to cooperate. If he can’t even tolerate contacts for a day of running errands, how is he supposed to use them instead of glasses for combat training? Maybe he should just go back to his apartment, get his glasses. If he’d been _thinking_ , he would’ve seen this misery coming and brought them along, instead of leaving them tucked safely away in his nightstand this morning. He blinks until his vision clears again, sighing heavily. The woman in front of him in line turns back to stare, gaze lingering.

He tugs at the neckline of his shirt, distinctly uncomfortable. He regrets changing so many things at one time. In retrospect, he should’ve started with just _one_ thing, but it seemed so much easier at the time to just do it all in one go. He pays for the groceries and leaves, picks his way back through the crowd to the underground.

He’s timed this horribly. There’s _way_ too many people waiting for the next train, not a chance he’ll get a seat. Maybe if he just tucks himself over in a corner of the station, he can wait out the crowd. It shouldn’t take too long, really, and the crowd will hopefully shrink over the course of the next couple trains. He’ll have to skip the stop at home to pick up his glasses if he doesn’t want to be late for another meeting, just enough time to drop the groceries off at Noct’s apartment on the way. He can sort out his own purchases after he makes Noct dinner.

He takes a few slow, measured breaths through his nose, carefully locking down the mounting anxiety. There really _are_ a lot of people in this station, but the train is approaching. So long as he can wait for the crowd to disperse a little, he can make it to a corner, keep his back to a wall until the next train comes.

People push past him, and he’s proud of how he doesn’t flinch at the contact. Already the station is significantly less crowded, and it’s easy to make his way to a bench along the wall. His contact is bothering him again, and he blinks a few times, stops in his tracks. His vision doesn’t clear. If anything, it’s _worse_.

Groaning, he realises the damned thing must’ve popped out. Even if he could _find_ it in this station, he wouldn’t want to put it back in. It’s a lost cause. The best he can hope for is the meeting going by quickly so he can get home and put his glasses back on, but first he has to drop off the groceries. While half-blind. Then he’ll have to make it through a meeting Noct _should_ be attending himself, but Noct is busy trying to be a _normal teenager_ , or at least as normal as the Crown Prince can be. He closes his eyes one at a time, tries to figure out just how disorienting this is going to be.

The headache is already starting to set in.

He hates everything.

 

He doesn’t get a seat on the next train, forced instead to cling awkwardly to a pole while holding the groceries in his other hand. At least he made it _on_ this one, and there’s not a whole lot of extra people packed on. The sooner this day is over, the better.

He’s stuck listening to the muffled conductor’s announcements, refusing to try to read the sign saying what stops are coming up. Really, he should have this memorised by now, know the number of stops between the two stations, but his head aches and he can’t _see_.

This is his stop, he realises as the crowd is pushing past him again. He lets go of the pole and makes his way off the train, up the stairs, blinking in the sunlight outside. It’s a short walk down the block to Noct’s building, and he shows his ID to the doorman before being allowed inside. He leans against the wall of the elevator, cool metal pressed against his face. He’s sure this isn’t appropriate, but to hell with it, he’s tired.

The groceries are stowed in Noct’s fridge, and he has to turn around and leave almost immediately. Noct is off doing something with his friend from school, probably haunting an arcade or something _else_ unbecoming of royalty, but now’s not the time to concern himself with that. He has to get himself back on the underground, has to get to that meeting.

 

At least it’s less crowded this time, but that may just be an advantage of riding a different line. The Citadel’s the last stop this direction, and he leans back in the chair he’s claimed (back to the wall, tucked into a corner) as it screeches its way through the tunnels. Definitely not helping the headache.

He checks his phone for the time as he gets off the train, realising with a groan that he’s not going to be done with this meeting in time to pick Noct up from the arcade _and_ make dinner by a reasonable hour. If he’s fast, he has just enough time to track Gladio down and send him to pick up Noct (and Prompto, probably) before resigning himself to an eternity of boredom and politics.

 

His head is splitting by the time he gets to the training grounds. He doesn’t care that people are staring at him now, knowing he looks vaguely disheveled and indifferent to how _weird_ he must look. Someone directs him inside to one of the training rooms when he asks after Gladio, where there’s apparently a basketball game happening. He tunes out the rest of what they’re saying, already convinced it’s unimportant.

It’s oddly quiet inside, considering there’s _supposed_ to be people doing something. He can hear laughter down the hall. He stops for a moment to regain his bearings, consider how much time he has before the meeting, automatically turning his back to the wall. Maybe it would be easier to just send Gladio a text. Why didn’t he think of that in the first place?

He barely processes someone calling his name before the ball hits him square in the face, back of his head smacking into the wall behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look i tried ok >_>


	2. Chapter 2

“Oh, fuck, you’re awake,” Gladio says, leaning over Iggy’s prone body and forcing his fists to remain where they are on his legs. The urge to shake his friend is overwhelming, but Iggy was just _unconscious_ and it won’t do him any good. “Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay.”

“My flashlight died,” Iggy says. His voice is slurred from the _fucking concussion_ but otherwise he sounds…normal. “I’m de-lighted!”

“You’re—” Gladio takes a second to process the pun. “Oh shit. Are you blind, _can you see me_ ?” He leans closer, reaches out a hand to do—something, he doesn’t even know what any more—but Iggy flinches violently from the movement. Laying prone on the floor his head can’t slam against the ground again, _thank fuck_ , but Gladio doesn’t know what to do when Iggy tries to get a hand under himself to push himself up.

“A calendar’s days are numbered,” Iggy says. His face tightens with pain as his arm shakes beneath him.

“Don’t _do_ _that_ ,” Gladio snaps. This time when Iggy flinches he ignores it, helps him sit up and lean against the wall.

“When songwriters die, they de-compose.” Iggy sounds tired now, at least, but what the _hell_ is with the puns? Gladio has no idea what’s going on, doesn’t know what to do, and for fuck’s sake he just—he’s just knocked out his best fucking friend because he couldn’t tell when Iggy was too distracted to see a damn basketball coming straight for his face. What the hell is wrong with him?

“Puns don’t tell me anything, Iggy,” Gladio says, trying to push down his frustration. He can’t let it out now, he _knows_ he’ll just lash out and hit something and make this whole thing even fucking worse, but _damn_ it’s hard when he can’t tell what Iggy needs him to do to help. “Like you’re always telling Noct, yeah? Use your fucking words.”

Iggy stares at him for a long, long minute. He _should_ look tired, or in pain, or basically anything but the bland, expressionless mask he’s giving Gladio right now. He closes one eye, looks at Gladio for a second longer, then closes the other and leans his head on the wall behind him. “Insect jokes bug me,” he says.

Okay, so Iggy _clearly_ isn't going to be saying anything sensible any time soon. That's probably from the concussion, right? Gladio rubs the back of his neck, trying to think around the panic screaming through his brain to figure out what the hell to do. And the idiots around him _aren't fucking helping_ , milling about in confusion and hesitant to step forward because none of them had thrown the ball. Idiots. Not that he's any brighter than any of them. 

A sharp pain in the back of his neck brings him back to himself, startled and cursing at the blood underneath his short fingernails. Right, now isn't the time to insult his teammates. He has to take care of Iggy before he does anything else. The medic's the best place to take him, right? Even if it's impossible to figure out what he needs with all those damn puns.

"Right, we need to get you up," Gladio says out loud, getting to his feet. Iggy's eyes snap open when Gladio reaches out to help him, one arm raising in a clear 'back off' gesture. No touching at all, then, not even _with_ warning. Gladio's chest tightens as Iggy slowly pushes himself up, and it's starting to feel hard to breathe. Like that time he had a rib broken in training and they'd had to make him take a potion before he was even allowed to move, except this time there's no physical reason for the difficulty. He's never felt like this before. He's not even sure what this _is_. "Gotta take you to the medic. You know where she is, right?"

Iggy opens his mouth to answer, then seems to think better of it and gives Gladio a slow nod instead. The walk to her office is slow, Iggy refusing any help Gladio might even think about offering, but at least he doesn't need to pause. _Does_ he need a break? Would he even try to communicate it if he did? Gladio obviously wouldn't be able to tell.

He hates this, he _really fucking hates this_ and he never wants an experience like it again.

" _Another_ training accident?" the medic asks with a sigh as they walk through her door. She waves vaguely toward an open bed, and Gladio has to fight down the most ridiculous urge to just pick Iggy up and put him on it. They've made it this far without incident; he can get onto a damn bed by himself.

He almost doesn't, sighing as his foot slips, as if all of this is just annoying him. Like he's not in pain or so concussed he's babbling nonsense every time he opens his mouth, like Gladio isn't panicking right next to him. But once he's settled he immediately pulls his phone out of his pocket, closing one eye again as he pokes through it. Gladio watches, wondering if he should stop him. Computer screens are bad for concussions, right?

"None of that, now," the medic says as she walks back over. Her voice is kind, but Iggy waves her off with an irritated look. He pokes his phone a few more times, then shoves it into Gladio's hands.

It's...his schedule? He's supposed to be in a meeting right now which, ha, no way Gladio would be _capable_ of attending, and then he's supposed to pick up Noct. Oh. He probably wants Gladio to take the kid home then.

"Is anybody going to tell me what happened, or am I just supposed to guess?" The medic interrupts Gladio's thoughts, and though her voice is still kind, her glare is strong enough to make them both flinch backwards. If there's one thing Gladio's dad had managed to get through to him, it was to _always_ respect your medic. You never know when you'll need help with something that requires more than a potion to heal.

"Sorry," Gladio says, trying to give her the type of smile that usually makes girls giggle. It falls short, wobbling somewhere around the edges, and he gives up the attempt with a sigh. "We were doing a training exercise with the basketballs and when Iggy showed up I figured somebody had to have warned him so, uh, I might have thrown it at him. And kind of knocked him out." He can feel Iggy's eyes glaring into his back and he shifts uncomfortably, drumming his fingers against his thigh to keep himself from rubbing his neck again. "His head kind of bounced off the wall. He wasn't out _long_ , maybe a couple minutes, I don't know...."

"And why isn't he telling me this himself?" The medic holds up her hand when Gladio tries to respond again, staring expectantly at Iggy. There's a long silence. Iggy's probably glaring at her.

"Stubborn ass," Gladio mutters.

"I _hate_ mules, they’re so half-ass," Iggy snaps.

The medic coughs into her sleeve, clearly holding back a laugh. "I see," she says. "Puns are a, er, _unique_ symptom, but I'm sure it's not outside the possibilities of a concussion. A potion should fix him up, but we'll want to keep him around for observation just in case."

"Right, sure." Gladio feels strangely reluctant to leave Iggy alone, but he hands back his phone with a weak smile. "I can handle Noct for the night."

He gets most of the way out the door before something else occurs to him and he turns back. “Oh, uh, you should probably warn him before you touch him. He’s not really great with physical contact.”

The medic gives him a sharp look, staring at Gladio long enough to make him uncomfortable. "Thank you for telling me," she says, a note of softness in her voice that is at odds with her still-hard eyes. Gladio shifts his feet a little, not certain if anything else is coming, but when the silence stretches too long he feels himself bend in an awkward bow. It's a goodbye he hasn't intentionally used in years, never having been comfortable with his family's role in the aristocracy, but today it makes him feel a little steadier as he leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
